Chinese Communist Party faces threat not seen since protests that led to Tiananmen Square massacre
These protests are momentous. Wherever they lead, they are already hugely significant.
China has witnessed bigger protests in Hong Kong, but nothing on the mainland has come close to this since 1989.
Unrest is actually commonplace in China but demonstrations are usually small, localised and easily quashed.
What will worry China’s leadership about these protests is their size, their spread across the country, and their persistence.
The authoritarian Chinese Communist Party has not seen a threat like this since the pro-democracy movements of the late 1980s that culminated in the brutal Tiananmen Square massacre.
The spark this time was an apartment fire in the western city of Urumqi that took at least 10 lives.
But these protests have been coming for months.
Seething anger and resentment at the government’s zero-COVID policies has been building. There is something more fundamental going on, though.
According to popular wisdom, ever since that infamous massacre at Tiananmen, the Chinese Communist Party and the people have had a deal.
We will make you more prosperous and keep society stable, and you will let us get on with running the country.
Stability and prosperity mean everything to the Chinese because, as they have learned since childhood, theirs has been a history of chaos, poverty and upheaval. The people have trusted their government to make sure that stays in the past.
During lockdown, however, the people have begun to doubt their government and its competence to rule.
Under the zero-COVID policy, people have been locked in their communities for months and they fear the state’s heavy handedness is killing people – in this case burned alive, locked in an apartment block in Urumqi.
And making matters worse, under lockdown, the economy has not continued on its ever upward trajectory.
People confront a line of police officers in Shanghai
The Chinese know the rest of the world is moving on from COVID while they are not. The sight on their televisions of World Cup crowds in their thousands without masks is proof of that. That compact between state and people is no longer delivering like it used to and it means we are in uncharted waters.
And more unrest is almost certainly on its way.
President Xi Jinping has staked a huge amount on China’s zero-COVID policy.
Instead of saving lives by importing more effective vaccines from the outside world – but losing face – his government has tried to eliminate the virus wherever it appears with draconian social controls.
But it has not worked and China is battling outbreaks in a multiplying number of cities. If people continue to protest and defy the lockdowns, the virus will spread.
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Rare street protests in China as police charge in
China is not prepared medically, though.
As Professor Kerry Brown, of King’s College London, puts it: “They have to quite quickly put in place emergency measures for the health service to take a kind of spike in numbers that might need to be hospitalised.”
Tracking, tracing and locking down may work with a quiescent population, but for an angry citizenry losing trust in the authorities, it does not.
“If you continue with the policies that have been in place at the moment, you’re going to get more and more of these protests and they could morph into something far more threatening,” Prof Brown added.
What the Chinese government fears most is a nationally organised opposition, knowing it has spelled the doom of dynasties in the past.
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Protesters call for Xi to stand down
When a harmless spiritual movement called Falun Gong went countrywide in the 90s and its followers surrounded Zhongnanhai, the government compound in Beijing, in a peaceful protest, the leadership was terrified and used the most draconian repression to stamp it out.
It has invested billions in an emerging Orwellian surveillance state to anticipate dissent and unrest and prevent it from spreading.
It now faces nationwide unrest erupting spontaneously. It will no doubt use all the resources of its totalitarian state to try to repress it, but faces its biggest challenge in more than three decades as it tries to do so.
Russia has launched a “massive” drone and missile attack on the Ukrainian capital overnight, after Moscow itself was targeted.
Amid flailing peace talks, the Kremlin’s nightly attacks on Ukraine continued.
Ukraine war – follow the latest updates
A large-scale Russian attack through the night into Sunday injured at least 11 in Kyiv and killed three people in towns surrounding the capital.
There were attacks elsewhere as well, including drone strikes in Mykolaiv, where a residential building was hit.
An apartment building destroyed after a Russian attack in Mykolaiv. Pic: State Emergency Service of Ukraine
‘Massive’ attack
In Kyiv, the city’s administration warned “the night will be difficult”, as people were urged to remain in shelters.
The city’s mayor Vitaliy Klitschko described it as a “massive” attack.
He said: “Explosions in the city. Air defence forces are working. The capital is under attack by enemy UAVs. Do not neglect your safety! Stay in shelters!”
It came after at least 15 people were injured in attacks the night prior.
Russia claimed it also faced a Ukrainian drone attack on Sunday, and that it intercepted and destroyed around 100 of them near Moscow and across Russia’s central and southern regions.
A municipality worker cleans up after a Russian drone strike on Kyiv. Pic: Reuters
Russia ‘dragging out the war’
Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine continued a prisoner exchange, marking a rare moment of cooperation in the war.
Amid the most recent attacks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeated his calls for sanctions on Russia.
Russia “fills each day with horror and murder” and is “simply dragging out the war”, he said.
A resident looks at an apartment building that was damaged in a Russian drone strike. Pic: Reuters
“All of this demands a response – a strong response from the United States, from Europe, and from everyone in the world who wants this war to end,” Mr Zelenskyy added.
Every day “gives new grounds for sanctions against Russia”, he said, and each day without pressure proves the “war will continue”.
Ukraine, meanwhile, is ready for “any form of diplomacy that delivers real results”.
Nine of a doctor’s 10 children have been killed in an Israeli missile strike on their home in Gaza, which also left her surviving son badly injured and her husband in a critical condition.
Warning: This article contains details of child deaths
Alaa Al Najjar, a paediatrician at Al Tahrir Clinic in the Nasser Medical Complex, was at work during the attack on her home, south of the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, on Friday.
Graphic footage shared by the Hamas-run Palestinian Civil Defence shows the bodies of at least seven small children being pulled from the rubble.
Rescuers can be seen battling fires and searching through a collapsed building, shouting out when they locate a body, before bringing the children out one by one and wrapping their remains in body bags.
In the footage, Dr Al Najjar’s husband, Hamdi Al Najjar, who is also a doctor, is put on to a stretcher and then carried to an ambulance.
The oldest of their children was only 12 years old, according to Dr Muneer Alboursh, the director general of Gaza’s health ministry, which is run by Hamas.
Nine children were killed in the strike. Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
“This is the reality our medical staff in Gaza endure. Words fall short in describing the pain,” he wrote in a social media post.
“In Gaza, it is not only healthcare workers who are targeted – Israel’s aggression goes further, wiping out entire families.”
Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
British doctors describe ‘horrific’ and ‘unimaginable’ attack
Two British doctors working at Nasser Hospital described the attack as “horrific” and “unimaginable” for Dr Al Najjar.
Speaking in a video diary on Friday night, Dr Graeme Groom said his last patient of the day was Dr Al Najjar’s 11-year-old son, who was badly injured and “seemed much younger as we lifted him on to the operating table”.
Hamdi Al Najjar, Dr Al Najjar’s husband who is also a doctor, was taken to hospital. Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
The strike “may or may not have been aimed at his father”, Dr Groom said, adding that the man had been left “very badly injured”.
Dr Victoria Rose said the family “lived opposite a petrol station, so I don’t know whether the bomb set off some massive fire”.
Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
‘No political or military connections’
Dr Groom added: “It is unimaginable for that poor woman, both of them are doctors here.
“The father was a physician at Nasser Hospital. He had no political and no military connections. He doesn’t seem to be prominent on social media, and yet his poor wife is the only uninjured one, who has the prospect of losing her husband.”
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Nineteen of Gaza’s hospitals remain operational, all of them are overwhelmed with the number of patients and a lack of supplies
He said it was “a particularly sad day”, while Dr Rose added: “That is life in Gaza. That is the way it goes in Gaza.”
Sky News has approached the Israeli Defence Forces for comment.
Read more:
Mum of emaciated baby in Gaza says ‘I don’t want to lose her’
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Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza began when the militant group stormed across the border into Israel on 7 October 2023, killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and abducting 251 others.
Israel’s military response has flattened large areas of Gaza and killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.
World
UN’s Antonio Guterres condemns ‘teaspoon’ of aid allowed into Gaza after dozens die in airstrikes
The head of the UN has said Israel has only authorised for Gaza what amounts to a “teaspoon” of aid after at least 60 people died in overnight airstrikes.
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said on Friday the supplies approved so far “amounts to a teaspoon of aid when a flood of assistance is required,” adding “the needs are massive and the obstacles are staggering”.
He warned that more people will die unless there is “rapid, reliable, safe and sustained aid access”.
A woman at the site of an Israeli strike in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
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Gaza: ‘Loads of children with huge burns’
Israel says around 300 aid trucks have been allowed through since it lifted an 11-week blockade on Monday, but according to Mr Guterres, only about a third have been transported to warehouses within Gaza due to insecurity.
The IDF said 107 vehicles carrying flour, food, medical equipment and drugs were allowed through on Thursday.
Many of Gaza’s two million residents are at high risk of famine, experts have warned.
Meanwhile, at least 60 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes across Gaza overnight.
Ten people died in the southern city of Khan Younis, and deaths were also reported in the central town of Deir al-Balah and the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north, according to the Nasser, Al-Aqsa and Al-Ahli hospitals where the bodies were brought.
A body is carried out of rubble after an Israeli strike in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
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‘Almost everyone depends on aid’ in Gaza
The latest strikes came a day after two Israeli embassy workers were killed in Washington.
The suspect, named as 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, Illinois, told police he “did it for Gaza”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney of fuelling antisemitism following the shootings.
The leaders of the UK, France and Canada are “on the wrong side of humanity and (…) history”, he said, after they threatened “concrete action” against Israel this week if it continues its “egregious” military operations in Gaza.
Mr Netanyahu also accused Sir Keir, Mr Macron and Mr Carney of siding with “mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers”.
Palestinians search for casualties in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
But UK government minister Luke Pollard told Sky News on Friday morning he “doesn’t recognise” Mr Netanyahu’s accusation.
Earlier this week, Mr Netanyahu said he was recalling negotiators from the Qatari capital, Doha, after a week of ceasefire talks failed to bring results. A working team will remain.
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 251 others.
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Read more on Sky News:
Shooting suspect ‘fired repeatedly’
Huge fire declared major incident
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The militants are still holding 58 captives, around a third of whom are believed to be alive, after most of the rest were returned in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israel’s offensive, which has destroyed large swaths of Gaza, has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
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